


Peripheral Vision

by Midnight_Sundae



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Hallucinations, Hearing issues, Mental Instability, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), disorientation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24579235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Midnight_Sundae/pseuds/Midnight_Sundae
Summary: Case #0152407Statement of Jun Shen regarding her encounters with a recurring figure.
Kudos: 2





	Peripheral Vision

STATEMENT BEGINS.

I’m not entirely sure how I got here, I don’t really care. I saw this place was looking for “encounters with the supernatural”. I don’t know if I count, I could just be going crazy. I don’t trust myself enough to make that call.

I first saw him in late June, around the twentieth, I think. Well, I say it’s the first time I saw him, but I really can’t remember if it truly was. He didn’t stand out, not in the slightest. And if you’d’ve told me I had seen him, or even talked to him before, at some nondescript park or coffee shop, I’d have no choice but to believe you.

That’s why I didn’t notice it at first, I think, he was just so average. If he appeared ten, twenty, thirty times, just at the corner of my eye, why would I notice it? Just a person, just a figure, just someone blurred into the background.

I did notice him eventually, I’m not stupid. Well, I might be stupid, actually. It was stupid of me to look for him, even when my eyes tried to slide past him, it was especially stupid of me to, when could finally track down a place where he stood, follow him down an alleyway.

There was nothing wrong with the alley, there was nothing uncanny or seedy-looking about it, but back then something put me on edge after only a couple steps in. I didn’t recognize it at first; it was subtle, but the sound of my footsteps were off. Every time I would take a step I would hear the clack of the hard sole against pavement a few beats off from when it should have been. About a meter in, I could’ve sworn my footsteps were a full second off from when they should’ve been. It was like lag, but in real life.

I left, it felt safe trying to track him down in the crowded street, but the alleyway was utterly abandoned and the figure ahead of me couldn’t make me go further, not even with his intriguing anonymity and reappearing act. At least, not back then.

In the week or so after that I… Honestly, I forgot about it. I think I told a friend what happened, but it didn’t get the reaction I was hoping for. He seemed concerned about me. He asked if I had been to the doctor recently. I brushed it all off as a one time fluke, summer break had just started, it was time to forget everything we learned the last semester and finally have the time but not the motivation to do things.

When my dad called back an answer from upstairs and I heard it from besides me I dismissed it as the pipes, when my sister’s laugh came out too loud I brushed it off as her enjoying the break, when the sound of my lungs became so discordant I felt the air fill my lungs on the exhale and felt the air leave it on the inhale I drowned it out with music.

Eventually, I couldn’t ignore it, and I was on a walk, trying to build up the courage to go to tell someone, when I saw him, just out of the corner of my eye.

It was him; I knew it was him, just standing there, or leaning, or whatever he was doing. At that moment I knew that it was his fault, and that if I saw him clearly, for even just a moment, everything would make sense, it would stop. 

I didn’t go in unprepared; I knew he would be there when I came back. I grabbed some chalk, a water bottle, my phone, and followed after him.

I didn’t even have to go back to the park. He followed me the entire way back, darting at the corners of my vision, luring me. When I was ready, he was waiting for me at a well-traveled path in the corner of my street. The familiarity did nothing to comfort me.

It was midday and I was ready for what would happen, or at least that’s what I thought. 

I didn’t run, I walked, dragging the chalk behind me with one hand and staring to the right so I could keep track of him in my peripheral vision.

And so it went like that. I don’t know how much time passed, with each step I could feel my perception deteriorating, it wasn’t just the figure, there were more things, dancing and darting just out of sight. Eventually I couldn’t tell where I was or what I was doing, the only thing pounding in my head were my offbeat footsteps and the absolute certainty that if I followed him long enough, I would be able to see him clearly.

I’m still not entirely sure what snapped me out of it, or why, but one second I was following the figure, and the next I was thinking of how strange it was that I recognized the path. Had I doubled back somewhere? It was unlikely considering the line of chalk I was leaving behind, but how else could I have recognized it?

At this point I had stopped walking and was trying to puzzle out what was going on, and suddenly I was hit with exhaustion. I sat down and reached to grab my water bottle and noticed I must have dropped it somewhere along the path.

That was fine, I had my chalk line and phone.

I lay down in the grass, with shapes flitting in my vision, before sitting up to look for my water bottle. Then I realized, I didn’t know what the line meant; I knew I had put it there to keep track of where I was going so I didn’t get lost, but the only thing I could do was stare, dumbfounded, at a guide I had no idea how to use.

My hand clutched at my phone but its use defied me, I was supposed to call someone? I didn’t even know what that meant.

And sitting there, with noises from hours ago, my vision full of darting unreal shapes, and two ways out I didn’t know how to use in a place I recognised from nowhere, I felt a sense of dread so bone-deep the only thing I could do was cry.

I was lost forever; I wasn’t even worried about food or water. As my sobs reached my ears too late, I knew I was gone for good.

I wasn’t, obviously, someone found me as soon as I left. I assume they were following the chalk line I left behind, maybe hoping for a prize at the end, maybe they were just bored. I don’t think they expected to find a teenage girl crying at the side of the street.

It doesn’t matter how I got back; it involved a lot of crying and confusing conversation on both sides. I was back home by midday.

I didn’t bother looking for where my walk had ended up, didn’t ask either. It doesn’t matter; I knew that I had never been there in my life.

My vision was never fully cleared of those weaving, spiraling shapes, the sound never quite caught up to where it should be.

I don’t know if my family’s noticed, don’t know if they care. My mom’s always been quick to dismiss any psychological problems as being lazy, or stubborn, or “making a scene”, I doubt my dad would do anything even if he bothered to pay attention to what I was doing, and my sister, well, she’s out with friends or strangers more often than not, can’t blame her, I would be doing the same thing if I could.

My friends have definitely noticed, I’ve always been outgoing, eager to leave the house, and even if it wasn’t fully motivated by the desire to hang out, the fact that the only contact I’ve had with most of them for the past month have been text messages and stilted conversations from chance meetings isn’t something they wouldn’t notice.

I think. They haven’t mentioned anything to me, so I can never be sure.

The last time I went out was to the beach, it was fine, for the most part. It was only a week after my second encounter, and was planned before school ended as a sort of celebration, so I felt I had to go.

The entire trip the only sounds were the voices of me and my friends, no calls from seagulls, no waves crashing against the shore, no visitors’ voices overlapping on the crowded beach.

I ignored him, a soundless beachgoer among many.

I didn’t sleep that night, not with all the noise.

I stopped going out after that, that was before things got really bad, when I started forgetting, and seeing things, and before I stopped talking to other people entirely. 

I don’t want them to see me like this.

And so, when my parents announced we were having a family vacation to London, it was possibly the only series of events that could have me excited about anything that had “family” as a prefix. I was the only one even vaguely excited about it, I think even my parents were doing it out of some sick sense of obligation. I thought maybe the change in scenery would help.

It didn’t.

I’m going to follow him, I need to see him, truly see him, it’s the only option that makes sense, that will make things make sense.

STATEMENT ENDS.

**Author's Note:**

> I did try to make the statement number match the date, so this statement was given July 24th 2015


End file.
